Laser cladding can be used to form coating surfaces on substrates. The coating surfaces are formed by melting a cladding powder, often containing metals, with a laser in a cladding apparatus. The melted cladding powder forms a molten pool on the surface of the substrate, which cools to form the coating surface.
When the cladding powder melts, the molten pool forms from aggregated melted cladding powder particles. The individual particles of the cladding powder, however, often have oxides formed on the surfaces of the particles. When the particles melt in the laser cladding process, the heated oxides are converted into gases. The gases generated from the melted particles can get trapped in the molten pool as the incited particles aggregate, and when the molten pool cools, the trapped gases form pores in the coating surface. These pores can distort the surface texture of the coating surface.
Attempts to prevent formation of pores in the coating surface include dry mixing the cladding powder with a flux. The flux reacts with the gases formed by heating the oxides on the surfaces of cladding powder particles, and thereby prevents the gases from being trapped in the coating surface.
The flux, however, can be difficult to distribute throughout the cladding powder and results in a mixture with a diminished flow mobility because the flux particles stick together. Reduced flow mobility can clog the tubes of the laser cladding apparatus that feed the cladding powder and flux mixture to a cladding head.
The cladding composition of the present disclosure solves one or more of the problems set forth above and/or other problems in the art.